Camille W. Dance & Co.

Camille Weanquoi is a distinguished choreographer, educator, and advocate for the arts. She holds prominent roles as the co-founder and Executive Director of the Baltimore Black Dance Collective and co-founder and co-director of the Baltimore Black Choreographers Festival. Weanquoi’s expertise spans West African and Contemporary African dance forms, modern dance, and sharing research and narratives rooted in the African American experience. She actively creates, performs, and instructs in African diasporic dance forms across the United States. Camille W. Dance & Co., the performance company she founded, focuses on traditional and contemporary expressions rooted in the rich tapestry of the African diaspora. Their repertoire is marked by a dynamic blend of movements, rhythms, and narratives that pay homage to the ancestral and cultural heritage of the African Diaspora. The company’s artistic endeavors extend beyond performances, offering specialized dance consulting services. Through this, the company aids in arts integration, program development, and culturally diverse dance education for K-12 educators, colleges and universities, private studios, and community initiatives. Through these initiatives, Camille W. Dance & Co. seeks to preserve and increase dance’s artistic and educational value as a medium of cultural expression and learning.

Camille Weanquoi gave her lecture, “How to Be a Good Ancestor: Civically Sound and Rooted in Community” which discusses the significance of The Way Forward performance as well as how it connects to traditions of storytelling and notions of democracy. Watch a recording of Weanquoi’s talk here.

The Camille W. Dance & Co. presented The Way Forward, a multidisciplinary, intergenerational performance that explores black women’s embodied personal and collective memories relating to shaping identity, the molding of generations, and the community. This performance is heavily influenced by the stories shared through community sister chats, personal family interviews, collective community memory, and the artwork of interdisciplinary artist Myeashia Osuntola Abram. Camille brings her audience on a rites of passage otherworldly journey towards understanding, acceptance, healing, and transformation. Watch a recording of The Way Forward here.

This is dedicated to those grandmothers, mamas, aunties, and all dem sistas who mothered us along the way forward…May we always go back to what we know & get what we need!